slide/negative scanners - anyone got any idea?

I have quite a lot of 35mm slides that I'd like to scan, and am looking at slide/negative scanners on ebay. Does anyone know what I should be looking for? I don't need professional studio quality scans, but would like to digitalise my slides to a quality similar to the pics a modern compact camera can take, if possible.

thanks!

Way back.......when I was a university lecturer we transferred quite a few 35mm slides to digital. We had quite a few machines scattered about but the Nikon Coolscan was bombproof.

Shaun

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We've got a slide/35mm scanner, i'll drag it out and will post the make etc. for you :xmas-wink:

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Had a few, used more including top gear. Currently retain a Polaroid Sprintscan 4000 that is fiddly but renders excellent results, (if large files at full whack). I gave up digitising all the slides I have, but selectively do a batch now and then.

I think some of the modern cheap ones get decent reviews, such as they sell in Aldi. Dynamic range is more important on slides, so consider that as well as the basic resolution you would be happy with.

Thanks all for the info. budget is limited, but then again once I've scanned all my slides and negatives I'd sell it on to recoup some of the cost.

What's dynamic range? and what sort of range would I need? is it a standard specification?

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Dynamic range is being able to pick up both the highlights & lowlights.
As a slide is a different chemical makeup to a negative it tends to record a greater dynamic range - and hence the spectral range and appearance of a slide is 'brighter'. You lose this often when scanning from slides, including printing onto paper from a slide, even in a photo lab without a lot of manipulation. 14-bit is a good place to start. Don't worry too much about high dpi; range is more important.

What the greater dynamic range does is allows the scanner to pick up the higher and lower light ranges - just like a greater dynamic range on a TV, or a greater frequency range on an amplifier, headphones etc; you just get 'more' of the image in.
The Nikons are good scanners, pretty straightforward to use, and if you can find one, AGFA Duoscan (Not AFS!) scanners can be are very good as well. Best photolab I used was a Fuji, and the scanners were superb, but I never used one of their compact/desktop scanners, they did seem very well-made however from those we stocked BITD.

One issue potentially though, is software support, in that many of the scanners were XP-compatible but required drivers to be installed from disc when first brought out, a lot of these manufacturers no longer provide support, manuals or drivers online however, and if you have later Windows...no idea.
You might of course be lucky & find a Leica..

that's very useful, thanks!

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Right, finally found it, ours is a Plustek OpticFilm 7200:

http://www.amazon.com/Plustek-OpticFilm ... B0002USNQG

It's a great little scanner, I haven't used it for a while though, I used to shoot with Velvia slide film and used this scanner to convert the images. The software I use with it is called VueScan (http://www.hamrick.com/)

Hope this helps :xmas-wink:

Plustek were a great option too - they were very popular with a lot of people who were doing bulk scanning & weren't looking at image manipulation so much.
One guy even switched from a Nikon to Plustek as he felt the quality was better than his Coolscan 2000
A shop I worked at replaced their Fuji scanner unit with a Plustek as well on their 18" dye-sub printing unit as the scanner parts were discontinued..

P.S Velvia is loooovely stuff! Been such a long time since I did much photography, should bust the old cameras out when the weather's a bit more shiny!

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Cheers mate, when I shot with Velvia it was with a Nikon F4, that was many cameras ago now though :xmas-big-grin:

My father-in-law has masses of slides from when my Wife was young, at some point we'll scan them all in with the Plustek.